IntroductionOver the last while, the Father has put a fresh impetus within me to learn anew from and impart fresh prophetic wisdom on the Book of Revelation.
The Book of Revelation is the least understood and one of the top neglected books of the New Testament. Yet this largely ignored and dismissed book holds the keys to connecting us to our eternal destiny, if we are able to “hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches” through it.
Most books of the Bible connect us to our past and to our present. They tell us where we came from and how we are to live within our present generation. But except for a few passages in the Old Testament prophets and brief discussions by Jesus and the apostles, the Book of Revelation is the only book whose purpose is to connect us to our post-mortal destiny.
Significantly, the Book of Revelation is also the only book of the New Testament to actually directly and repeatedly claim to be the direct Word of God! Should that not tell us something about its importance?
The Prophetic Language
Why then is Revelation so neglected and otherwise abused? It is because it is written in the language of prophecy. And unless one is fluent in the prophetic tongue, which requires fluency in the prophetic spirit, the book remains as so much gibberish, dismissed as “allegories,” “metaphors,” and “symbols” to be humanly guessed at in the form of “interpretations.”
It takes a prophetic ear to understand what Revelation is trying to tell us. The Book itself tells us so—over and over. “He that has ears, let Him hear what the Spirit is saying.” This is not about what an apostle is saying. It only takes the ears of a man to hear a man speak. But it takes the ears of the Spirit to hear and understand “Spirit speak” (much as we already said in “The Language of Eternal Life”).
As an illustration, the Chinese language is comprised of pictograms, not letters. If you don’t know Chinese, then all you see in the pictograms is meaningless symbols. But to the Chinese, the pictograms are words. However one must know the language behind the pictograms to understand their meaning.
So it is with the Book of Revelation and the language of prophecy—a language which is not confined to the ears of a single mortal generation. To the non-prophetic ear, the language is just symbols and metaphors and allegories. But no. It is a language of the prophetic spirit to be understood by the prophetic spirit throughout the generations. And it is the Father’s desire for us to understand this language better in our generation as we consider what the Spirit is indeed saying toward the coming of the Lord.
The Revelation of Jesus Christ
Above all, the Book of Revelation is specifically the revealing of Christ. It is not about events. It is about Him. It is specifically about how His revealing affects His creation as the Glorified One. And that effect is one of massive collision--collision on a scale unlike any other seen in the rest of the Bible.
The theme of this revelation is “speed under pressure.” Jesus is giving us to know that He is coming back in the flesh, and that He is doing so quickly. Numerous times in the first chapter and the last, He or an angel tells us that His return is near and soon from the time that the revelation was first given to John.
Yet the most prominent characteristic of the revelation is pressure in the form of what we know as tribulation. The tribulation is the colliding effect of His revealing on us who have been redeemed by Him. And His wrath—that is, His destructive love—is the colliding effect of His revealing on all others “whose names are not found written in the Book of Life.”
- A revelation of earth cleansing and restoration
In life, the faster some works of healing and restoration are to be, the more painful they are to endure in their speediness. Take removing a splinter. I can take a splinter out the fast way or the slow way. The fast way is more painful because I have to “dig” at the skin to get the thing out. The slow way is less painful—just let the body eventually surface it out—but I have to put up with the infection for a whole lot longer.
That is how it is with the revelation of Christ. His revelation is one of quick purging and restoring of the earth. So the whole revelation is formed of this tension between His speed of return and the painful pressure associated with that speed toward cleansing. The book itself was transmitted by a man under pressure to people under pressure about a creation to pass through hitherto unimaginable pressure related to this speedy retributive cleansing. Pressure, pressure, pressure!
Perseverance: the Speed of Your Mind under Pressure
So now, as the redeemed of every generation since the revelation was released, we are caught between the promise of the Lord’s speedy return and the crisis pressure associated with it. For all men, a short time under pressure seems like a long time.
How many times have we heard it said in a crisis, “Those minutes seemed like an eternity”? Well, that is how it is relative to the speedy return of the Lord. Because of the tribulation under the speed, the time seems long.
It is because the time seems long, that the parallel theme to speed under pressure in this book is perseverance. Repeatedly, Jesus or an angel is exhorting God’s people to maintain perseverance.
So the truth of the mystery is this: The intensity of the pain we feel in tribulation here under the sun in our wait for the Son is itself the evidence that His return is indeed being conducted with great speed. Our sense of the Lord’s delay is in our mortal minds only.
But that is not something any of us can truly appreciate until we see it from the other side.
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It is my desire to continue with this commentary a piece at a time until we can get whatever new, real holistic sense Father would show us in the now from this terrible book. (That’s terrible as King James uses it!)
Hopefully we will, in course, also be able to prophetically resolve some of the murky issues that discourage us from taking this book to heart for our times due to mortal unbelief. We want a heart that realizes that “All scripture is profitable [now, not 2000 years ago or 2000 years from now] for instruction.”
I can’t promise how far I will go or how far this commentary will get. But stay tuned, and do keep praying for this ministry! Many thanks to all for your prayers and your gifts.
Chris Anderson
New Meadow Neck, Rhode Island
First Love Ministry
- a ministry of Anglemar Fellowship
http://www.firstloveministry.org4/16
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Page updated January 24, 2018
